Tuesday, November 9, 2010

They try to make me go to replay & I say NO NO NO!

During the winter meetings the MLB big wigs will discuss expanding Instant Replay. Bud Selig will implore "For the good of the game" clause. Another Bud blunder in the making. It's amazing the growth the game has experienced with this ass clown at the helm. I digress, today's topic would be replay. It would be terrible for the game. Here is why.

During Sunday's Eagles game Jason Avant just missed getting into the end zone on a pass play. Big Red threw a challenge flag. The call was upheld and the Birds ran a QB sneak with the dog killer. The call on the field was a touchdown. The Colts challenged the call and got a reversal. One play was run in 24 minutes for real time. It's an absolute joke how replay in the NFL brings the game to a screeching halt. Football has 10 minutes of actual action. Replay has turned a 3 hour 15 minute game into a 4 and 1/2 hour affair. Baseball has tried to speed up the game, replay would be a major step back. What's next to speed up the game? Is Steve Trachsel coming out of retirement?

As bad as everyone thinks the Major League Umpires suck, think again. They are by far the best officials in the four major sports. If you watched the Eagles/Colts game you know the NFL refs have no idea what they are doing. It is not their fault. They are throwing more flags because the league had directed them to, it's obvious. It's a huge mess. NHL refs? What they call a penalty in the first period is not in the third period. In OT it's 'No decapitation, no foul'. The NBA refs? They bet on games so it's kind of like the WWE, predetermined. The MLB umps get it right a vast majority of the time. They need to make a call on every pitch. The strike zone needs to have some consistency that's a given but replay won't be used for that. They get the close calls at first base right 999 times out of 1,000. Jim Joyce blew a call at the worst possible time but they have that call dialed in. Even when you think they blew one the replay usually shows they got it right.

Baseball has had the fewest rules changes of any major sport over the last 100 years for good reason. It is a close to perfect as a sport can get. As much as you want to 'fix' baseball Mr. Selig it's fine as is. Bad calls are part of the game, let's keep it that way.

3 comments:

I too felt this way until this year. Espn did a study on 2 weeks of MLB games and came to the conclusion on "close plays" the MLB umpires only got it clearly correct 66% of the time. The contacted MLB and got the "no comment" treatment. If I was Bud Selig I'd say "ok lets sit down SHOW me the evidence so I can see what you're talking about". Then, there were so many obvious mistakes in the Playoffs. Mistakes that were game changing. If a good system that didn't take away from the flow of the game could be introduced I'd be for it. I mean if you limited catchers visits to the mound to 2 per inning or you have a manaatory pitching change that shave like a half hour of the game, giving you plenty of replay time.

If you limited catchers to 2 mound visits an inning Jorge Posada would threaten to retire. I think ESPN was wrong when they came out with that 'study'. Who is to say this call was right or wrong? Sometime you can't tell with replay.